


fall inside the rabbit hole again

by CycloneRachel



Category: Batwoman (TV 2019)
Genre: Character Study, Gen, Implied/Referenced Character Death, Internal Conflict, Mentioned Kate Kane, Season 1 Spoilers, Short One Shot
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-12-11
Updated: 2020-12-11
Packaged: 2021-03-10 23:26:53
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,000
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28015419
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/CycloneRachel/pseuds/CycloneRachel
Summary: Alice deals with the loss of her sister.
Relationships: Beth Kane | Alice & Kate Kane
Comments: 4
Kudos: 12





	fall inside the rabbit hole again

**Author's Note:**

> hi friends!
> 
> So this was inspired by the season 2 trailer, and I figured that I might as well get into this, throwing out my speculation before the show starts up again. I am sad to lose Kate, and I hope she isn't really dead (this fic assumes that she is) but at the same time, I can't wait for Javicia Leslie's take and hope that she gets a good story and that her character will be developed well in the season to come!
> 
> (also this is my first time getting into writing Alice, so I hope it's alright)

Alice had, certainly, dreamed about killing the Batwoman.

(especially after Kate had chosen the wrong Beth over her)

Many times, she’d imagined Gotham’s heroine being brought low by members of her Wonderland gang, presented to her just like how they had first met.

(Well... like how she and Kate had first met. Batwoman had been a different story, but since then they had faced off many times, both at the mercy of the other at different points)

She would take her time, perhaps giving the woman who had once been her sister hope that she would spare her or that she could escape, that her friends would be able to set her free. She’d make sure, then, that Kate couldn’t free herself.

Then, holding the only piece of Kryptonite she could get in Gotham, she would let Kate see it, illuminating her face in poison-green light.

And she would drive it into Batwoman’s heart.

She would watch the life go out of Kate’s eyes, as she breathed her last... then she would finally fall, and this time Alice wouldn’t be the one left alone. Kate’s father, step-sister (imposter sister, more like), and friends- they would be without her. They’d experience loss, and someone they loved abandoning them. Alice would watch, from a distance, perhaps with someone who’d never betray her by her side, and smile- knowing that she could move on.

But it hadn’t happened that way.

Instead, Kate had simply left the city- taking Batwoman with her. A force of nature, an unfortunate plane crash, and her story was over. Her family was left to pick up the pieces, going on living their lives.

(In the days and weeks after it happened, they looked for her more than they ever looked for Beth. They couldn’t accept that she was gone...

And maybe Alice couldn’t either.)

(She remembered her first stop down the rabbit hole- another crash, how it felt seeing Kate being pulled out of the car by Batman and both of them leaving her and their mother there to face their certain doom. How it felt, waiting for her to come back, but it slowly setting in that she never would. Waking up and being found by another family, one that (she thought) wouldn’t hurt her or leave her.

How foolish she had been, after the fear and confusion had become normal in her life and she could allow herself to feel hope)

(What made Kate worth so much more than her, Alice wondered? Why did they not give up on finding her? Why were none of them coming to her, and asking her if she wanted to participate in the search, or how she felt about the possible death of her only sister?)

Whatever the answers were, Alice wanted them. And what was more, if Kate was dead, she wanted to make sure as well.

(She supposed it was appropriate- three years prior, she’d heard Batman himself had disappeared, and now his cousin had followed suit. But unlike him, Batwoman had been a pariah, no better than Alice herself under the orders of Commander Kane. Now, she was a hero like him, and it was only a pity that she had to seemingly die to be declared as such)

(Alice just hated that she hadn’t been behind it. It was the kind of poetry that she would have appreciated, that she who’d been a captive for so many years had now imprisoned someone else for a change.

And she’d just had to say goodbye to Mouse. Dear, sweet Mouse who had never let her down until recently, who she’d built a bond with that had been forged in blood. It wasn’t right, letting him go and then involuntarily losing her.)

Perhaps she wanted to have taken Kate’s face. It could’ve been useful, eventually. But it also would have been just a bonus, to knowing that Batwoman would be out of her life for good. No more would she have to plan to capture her, waste energy on so much as thinking about her. No more would she look at her sister, wearing a cape and cowl so much like that of the cousin who’d abandoned them both. With time, eventually, Gotham could be hers.

But now, she couldn’t even find her sister. She was no closer to taking over Gotham than she had been before Batwoman made her grand, annoying entrance. And even worse, though Kate was gone, it seemed that it was nothing like Alice had fantasized. She wasn’t in control, didn’t know what would happen next.

And, somehow, she found herself by a gravestone marked with Kate’s name, crying. Not necessarily for her sister, but for what she’d lost with this disappearance.

Her chance at revenge, first of all. Sure, she could take it out on the Crows, and the replacement sister, but playing with Batwoman was much more fun. She deserved to make Kate feel what she felt, and then deprive Gotham of their hope, just as all of her hope had been stolen from her during her time with Cartwright. And what was more, it deserved to be public- on television, over the radio with Vesper Fairchild’s sardonic commentary, it didn’t matter. This shouldn’t have been a quiet thing. All of the city should have known what kind of a person she was, what she had done to her family.

She should have been able to deliver justice, on the sister who’d abandoned her too many times- it didn’t even require death.

And once Kate had fallen down the rabbit hole too, once she truly understood what Alice went through, Alice would offer her a place by her side, a chance to share the victory.

But she couldn’t rule with her, while she was the hero, while she couldn’t deal with killing someone. And deep down, it wasn’t Kate she really wanted to kill.

(as she’d find out, when the new Batwoman appeared in her hideout like a shadowy ghost, she’d killed neither)


End file.
